Wednesday, November 18, 2009

As you know, her chart was quite large, so printing it up took quite a bit of time and paper. You also wanted me to have it notarized, so I had to drag it down to Local Bank and wait in line.

Then postage was a fortune, since you wanted it sent certified.

Anyway, because it took some time and effort, I enclosed a cover letter asking for $50 payment. Your office manager was kind enough to send me a check for $50 last month to cover this, on the same day she received the packet.

So it was quite a surprise to get a personal note from you yesterday, saying that you felt the $50 was excessive. You did some calculations in your letter, and said that (based on state law) you only owed me $27.45, instead of the $50 I'd previously asked for (and received).

But it was still nice of you to send a check for $27.45 attached to your letter, paying me what you thought was "reasonable, and more than fair" for Mrs. Jones' records.

I've deposited both checks, and thank you and your law firm for having paid me a total of $77.45 for a chart I'd only asked $50 for in the first place. Extra money around the holidays is always nice.

20 comments:

If I can say one good thing about attorneys ... I've *never* had one quibble about any amount of money under a few grand. Never.

In fact, many of them start with the idea that they'll be sending a secretary and a portable copier to my office for records, so I've always figured they realize they're getting an excellent deal when we copy things ourselves for $50 or whatever (although I've also always figured that was a bluff and they didn't really *intend* to send the secretary & copier ... that is the *last* thing we need around here- unless they plan on letting us keep both the secretary and the extra copier on a permanent basis).

When I worked as a paralegal (we handled both insurance defense and plaintiffs' cases), we'd always engage a professional document service to go on-site and copy the records.

We didn't want to risk missing some documents, we wanted to make sure the photocopies were legible and properly sorted and bound, that the document copier either was, or had access to, a notary, and we'd want to make sure there was a record of the records we obtained so that when other parties got involved and served requests for production of documents, we could direct them to the company to get their own copies.

But first and foremost, we didn't want to antagonize the provider in any way, shape, or form, because we knew that we might need your good will at some point, and being litigators, we knew we'd be starting out with an automatic half-the-distance-to-the-goal penalty.

In conclusion, you were dealing with one dumb-ass lawyer who should (but won't) feel damn lucky he got what he did for a measly $77.45.

Not sure where you practice, but in Texas there is a mandate regarding physician's charging for copying records--@20 for the first 25 pages, then 50 cents per page thereafter. You can charge $15 for notarizing, and you can charge actual cost for postage. If you write a "narrative" of what's in the records, you can charge a "reasonable" fee in addition. This rule applies to whomever requests the records, even lawyers. You can actually get in trouble for overcharging here. Even using our required fees, if the chart was more than about 40 pages, he still got a good deal.

I'm a legal assistant, have been for a long time, and I agree with the previous poster - no records until payment is received. $50 for an extensive office chart is nothing - do you have any idea what hospitals charge for records? Hospitals have companies that come in and copy charts so their staff doesn't have to do it, and a huge chart, say for a long ICU stay, can be upwards of $1,000 (they charge per page). Attorneys are so freaking annoying (I should know, I've had various ones signing my paychecks for the last 20 years).

If that attorney had that kind of time on his hands--to do such calculations and then personally draft a letter on something this insignificant--then I can certainly see how $23 really is a big deal to him. Clearly, he isn't overloaded with real work or else he'd have just said to hell with it.

Regardless, congrats on the extra cash. Think of it as compensation for having to put up with his bullshit.

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